Welcome to Nobody Told Me. I'm Jan Black. And I'm Laura Owens. Are you a workaholic, a perfectionist, an overachiever? Maybe all three of those things.

Our guest on this episode, Dr. Brian Robinson, is a licensed psychotherapist who describes himself

as a recovering workaholic. And he's the author of a new book aimed at helping people break the

cycle of overworking. The book is called hashtag chill. Turn off your job and

turn on your life. Brian, thanks so much for joining us. Well, thank you. It's great to be here.

So talk to us a little bit about your background and when you decided you needed to change your

workaholic ways. Well, it's a long story, so I'll try to be brief.

I am what I call a recovering workaholic.

There was a time in my life when I used my work.

Like many people use alcohol or food or drugs.

I overdid it.

I binged.

I slept in my clothes.

I hid it from my family when they complained and snuck it around,

just like an alcoholic would sneak a drink. I got high. I went through lows. I, well, alcoholics have blackouts. I had brownouts. Brownouts are when you're not present in the moment, your mind somewhere else and you don't remember conversations or you ask a question and you've already been given the answer three times.

So it's a severe extreme workaholism is not only a problem to the mind, it's damaging to the body.

And it's associated with higher heart attacks, gastrointestinal problems, and other kinds of immune disorders.

So it's clearly a problem, and a lot of people don't understand that.

When I was at the university, the research I did, I did

the first study on the effects of workaholism on children. I actually did a special segment on

2020. And what we found was that children of workaholics, in some cases, are worse off than

children of alcoholics because they have higher anxiety,

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